How to fix a water damaged Galaxy A5: won’t turn on after it got wet

Hello and welcome to our latest troubleshooting article for the Galaxy A5 (#GalaxyA5). In this episode, we give you some tips on what you can do if you are experiencing one of the situations below. We hope you’ll find this post helpful.

My Samsung Galaxy A5 has just developed a problem with the download arrow constantly flashing and trying to display a download/update in progress. I can’t see what the notifications are saying as they are blinking on and off too quickly. This is only happening when wifi is switched on. I have tried turning the phone off and on again and have also tried the 3 button restart suggested for the Note. Since switching off WiFi, I have a notification saying ‘Google calendar download size requires WiFi’.

Solution: A downward facing arrow in the status bar is an indication that your phone is trying to download something. One of your apps may be set to automatically download contents or sync when wifi connection is active. Since you’re also getting a message regarding Google Calendar app, we suggest that you begin looking there. The message seems to suggest that your A5 may be trying to sync up or download contents related to your Google Calendar app. If you need this app, then make sure that it finish up downloading the necessary data. Do not interrupt it by disconnecting wifi. If you have tons of data for your Google Calendar, it may take a while for the download to end. The rate of the download also depends on the speed of your internet connection. If you want to hurry up the download, then make sure that your wifi is fast.

Problem #2: What to do if Galaxy A5 won’t update to Android Oreo

Samsung Galaxy A5 will not update to the Oreo 8.0 update. My wife has the same phone on the same carrier and she has already received the update. Everytime I go to check it manually if an update is available is saying that it is up to date. Can you shed any light on this matter for me please? I have been in touch with Samsung there and said that is down to the carrier to release the update. I have spoke to my carrier and they said that there’s nothing they can do. Now what gets me is that my wife is on the same network and she has already received the update. we have exactly the same phone.

Solution: Delivery of Over-The-Air (OTA) updates does not happen over night. Not all subscribers receive updates, even when phones are of same make and model in the same network. Updates are automatically scheduled to take place so as not to overload the servers. We suggest that you wait for some time. There are cases wherein carriers can finish releasing Android updates for months. We know this is not ideal but that’s the reality and we have no control over that. When your device gets the update rests entirely on your carrier’s system. Customer service representatives over the phone can’t help you with that either. Some carriers may empower their technical support agents to remotely start a system update but this is carrier-specific. We don’t think your carrier has this capability otherwise the agent you talked to previously should have done that already.

There’s a number of possible reasons why your Galaxy A5 does not install system updates. Below are some of the common ones:

device has insufficient storage space

corrupted system cache

root software or custom firmware blocking the update

bad third party app

unknown software glitch

update being downloaded is incompatible

source of OTA update times out

unknown hardware malfunction

Try to check this troubleshooting article we published earlier to see if there’s anything that you can do on your level.

Problem #3: How to fix water damaged Galaxy A5: won’t turn on after it got wet

Galaxy A5 purchased in May 2018. A toddler threw it in the pool. It was in there for about 5 minutes before being rescued. Immediately put the phone in a Ziploc bag of rice and left it there for 24 hours. The phone won’t turn on, however, the blue light is flashing. Samsung says that none of their phones are water proof, but send it to them with $150 and they will repair it. I do not know what Android version means.

Solution: Technically, there’s no water-proof smartphone at this time. Even the best phones nowadays are only water-resistant. Your A5, while water-resistant, may have succumb to water damage when its water-resistance protection was compromised by the impact and high-pressure. Samsung water-resistance is a bit overhyped. This is why it’s never advisable to bring a water-resistant device like an A5 in a pool. High-pressure created during swimming or during a drop can cause water or moisture to enter the device and short components. If your phone was working normally before it got dropped in water, then you can assume it’s been water damaged. Unfortunately, drying it by whatever means may not help at this point. The best thing that you can do right now is to let Samsung check it so repair can be done. There’s no software trick or any other thing that you can do right now to fix a physically broken device. The most likely reason is a water-damaged screen assembly and you need a professional to diagnose the issue and replace the part if necessary.

Problem #4: How to recover data if your Galaxy A5 is dead

My phone started to unplug as there was moisture in the charging system. I unplugged and left it unplugged overnight. The next morning it wouldn’t accept a charge and was dead. I went to Best Buy and they tried different chargers and nothing helped. I took it to Sprint and they did the same. I was told there is a problem with the A5 phone sending out this type of message and than going dead and the only way to fix it is to reset to factory settings, but I would than lose all personal information on my phone. Please help as I do not want to loose all of my personal stuff.

Solution: If your phone still powers on normally but the charging port is already nonfunctional, the only way for you to recover your data is by:

transferring them to a laptop wirelessly, or

by saving them to the cloud.

If you want to keep a copy of your files to your laptop, you can do that by using an app that works across platforms like ShareIt. You need to install this app to both phone and PC to allow file transfer.

If you don’t want to use Shareit app, you can do some Google research on your own.

Another way of saving your files at this point is by utilizing the cloud. Samsung has its own free cloud service that you can access using your own Samsung account. You can go under Settings > Cloud and accounts to use it. Alternatively, you can also make use of Google’s own cloud service to save your photos, videos, etc. Each cloud service may be limited to what type of data you can save. They are also limited in terms of total available space but you can always pay for more.

If your phone no longer turns on and won’t even power back on, you won’t be able to get your files out. To do that, the device must work normally since you need to unlock the screen first to allow a secondary device like a computer to access the storage device. If you can’t stand losing very precious data, try to look for data recovery companies online, or in your area. Data recovery or digital forensics is expensive and unguaranteed. Tools to recover data from a powered off Android device is not publicly available and is usually only available to some select law enforcement agencies.

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